duke of Upper Bavaria (from 1294) and of united Bavaria (1340–47), German king (from 1314), and Holy Roman emperor (1328–47), first of the Wittelsbach line of German emperors. His reign was marked by incessant diplomatic and military struggles to defend the right of the empire to elect an emperor independently of the papacy, to consolidate his own position, and to improve the status of his family. Early life As the younger son of Louis II, count Palatine and duke in Upper Bavaria, Louis had no claim to the crown by birth. On his father’s death in 1294, the 11-year-old boy was made a ward of his brother Rudolf, who was then 20, and of his mother, Mechthild, a Habsburg and a daughter of King Rudolf I. Louis immediately found himself involved in high politics; his brother took the side of King Adolf of Nassau and his mother that of her brother, Albert I of Austria, who was attempting to depose Adolf. Keeping her son out of Munich, she sent him to her brother’s court in Vienna, where he...